Mark Geragos Says Will Play Again
They were bayoneted in their homes. Drowned in the Black Sea. Shot. Tortured in front of crowds. Forced to convert. Forced into prostitution. Burned alive. Poisoned. Driven into the desert to dice of thirst. Their bodies were thrown in pits, torched, eaten by dogs and picked over by vultures.
Past many estimates, a million Armenians died in the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1920, one of the first genocides in a century that would be defined by mass killings. Ignored by nigh of the earth and denied by the Turkish government, the Armenian slaughter was considered for generations a "perfect genocide," its victims forgotten, its perpetrators unpunished.
Then, in the mid-2000s, court cases in Los Angeles, habitation to 1 of the largest Armenian communities exterior Armenia, delivered a measure out of justice that history had long denied. 3 Armenian American attorneys sued to collect life insurance policies on victims of the genocide, and came away with a pair of class-activeness settlements totaling $37.5 1000000. Finally, in an American court, the genocide was treated as fact.
In the decade that followed, however, the much -to-be reparations devolved into a corrupted process marked by diverted funds and misconduct that even the lawyers involved characterized as fraud, The Times found in an investigation that drew on newly unsealed case filings, other court documents, official records, and interviews.
More than $one.1 million in a settlement with a French insurer was directed at various points to sham claimants and depository financial institution accounts controlled by a Beverly Hills attorney with no official office in that instance, co-ordinate to court filings and financial records. A French foundation that was supposed to distribute millions in settlement funds to clemency was never fix, and some $1 one thousand thousand of that money ended up at Loyola Police School, the alma mater of two attorneys in the instance, according to an bookkeeping provided by the schoolhouse.
In addition, Christian churches that were supposed to get hundreds of thousands of dollars in settlement funds told The Times that they did not receive the money.
Armenians who stepped forrard to collect on ancestors' policies in the settlement with the French insurerhad their claims rejected at an astonishing charge per unit of 92%, courtroom records show. Applicants were denied despite offering disarming evidence such every bit century-one-time insurance records, birth certificates, ship manifests, paw-drawn family trees and copies of heirloom Bibles.
"It was for us blood money — blood of the people killed in the genocide," said Samuel Shnorhokian, a retired French businessman who served on a court-approved settlement boardand has tried for years to persuade the FBI and other agencies to investigate. "We never thought there would be misappropriation of funds."
::
The insurance settlements had their origin in the bedtime reading of a Glendale lawyer named Vartkes Yeghiayan. Information technology was 1986, and many Armenian Americans were worried about keeping the memory of the genocide live. Few Americans had heard of the massacres, then-President Reagan refused to even back up a day of celebration for fearfulness of angering Cold War allies in Turkey.
Yeghiayan, the son of a genocide survivor, was plodding 1 night through the memoirs of a former U.Due south. ambassador to the Ottoman Empire when he stumbled on a passage nearly victims' life insurance policies.
Administrator Henry Morgenthau Sr. wrote that in the heart of the slaughter, the Turkish interior minister had demanded a listing of Armenians with American life insurance, proverb, "They are practically all expressionless.... The government is the beneficiary now."
At abode in Glendale, Yeghiayan leapt up, as he later recalled in speeches and interviews, exclaiming, "There is a listing! We have to notice this list!"
He spent much of the adjacent xiii years researching the policies. He placed ads in Armenian newspapers seeking families who held on to ancestors' insurance documents, and combed through athenaeum in Washington; Geneva; Aleppo, Syria, and elsewhere. He constitute a 1919 letter of the alphabet in which a lawyer for New York Life estimated the potential cost of the mass killings of Armenian customers at $7 million, a sum equal to more than $100 1000000 in today's dollars. Yeghiayan believed the carrier had not paid the victims' heirs.
He came to see collecting those policies every bit a style to not just compensate families, but also to establish the genocide equally beyond dispute. In those years, his quest for justice was alone and low-budget. At i point, Yeghiayan used the Glendale Public Library to print 594 pages of microfiche records, feeding dime after dime into the motorcar. His already small-scale law practice suffered. He brutal behind on his taxes and filed for bankruptcy.
Finally in 1999, Yeghiayan had enough evidence for a lawsuit confronting New York Life. Three years later, he sued the French insurance giant AXA.
Facing down global corporations with squadrons of well-paid attorneys, Yeghiayan recognized he needed a legal gun of his own.
Marker Geragos was so a ascent star in L.A. law. He practiced mainly criminal defense at his family unit's downtown business firm, and he had attracted national press representing Clinton family associate Susan McDougal during the Whitewater investigation. In the years that followed, he amassed a clientele that kept him in the spotlight, including Winona Ryder, Michael Jackson and murderer Scott Peterson.
At Yeghiayan's invitation, Geragos signed on to the insurance litigation in 2001. The team already included up-and-coming course-action lawyer Brian Kabateck, who would go on to become a prominent plaintiff'due south chaser and president of the 50.A. County Bar Assn.
The three attorneys were Armenian Americans, role of a proud and active 50.A. ethnic group of more 200,000, and the genocide cases offered them an attractive combination of community service and fiscal gain. When the insurers agreed to pay — New York Life, $20 meg in 2004; and AXA, $17.5 1000000 a year afterwards — more than $7 million went to legal fees and associated costs, court records bear witness.
Both settlements mandated that the lion's share of the coin would become to individuals who could produce show they were descendants of the Armenian policyholders. Beyond that, charities serving the Armenian community would get $3 million, along with whatsoever money was left over after paying descendants.
The New York Life case ran smoothly with a committee of prominent Fifty.A. Armenians appointed by the state insurance commissioner, including current City Councilman Paul Krekorian, vetting applications. People submitted regime records and accounts of how relatives perished and survivors rebuilt lives in Fresno; Yerevan, Armenia; Marseille, France; Beirut and elsewhere. One family sent a piece of fabric from the tent their grandmother had slept in after existence marched into the desert to die. Another shared a photo of its patriarch continuing in front of his sewing machine store in Harput in the Ottoman Empire, in a region of modern-day Turkey.
Ultimately, the committee approved 44% of claims, according to a news release.
It was in the 2nd case that red flags emerged.That settlement, with Paris-based insurer AXA, designated up to $11.35 million for descendants. Decisions about whether applications were legitimate or not were to be fabricated by a lath of 3 prominent French Armenians, co-ordinate to the settlement terms and court filings.
Months before the French board's appointment, the attorneys — Kabateck, Yeghiayan and Geragos — established important parts of the approving process in Los Angeles, co-ordinate to court records and lawyers' emails afterward turned over to authorities.
They installed as settlement administrator — the coordinator of the claims procedure —a courtroom interpreter from Glendale who had helped run the New York Life settlement. They instructed him to hire staff and set up operations in downtown L.A., in the same Wilshire Boulevard office used for the New York Life case.
The arrangement put the process of deciding who got coin 6,000 miles from Paris, making it difficult for the French board to provide any meaningful oversight.
"The fact we were in French republic, we didn't know how they were working and what they were doing," said Shnorhokian, the board member and retired Parisian executive.
"Information technology was practically impossible," said lath member Jean-Charles Zaven Gabrielian, a surgeon in Marseille. The board did not object to the process or to the selection of the settlement ambassador because, as Gabrielian explained: "I trusted them."
An email Kabateck wrote to the two other lawyers in 2008 suggests they saw a particular benefit in preserving that trust: "It is of import to keep skillful feelings from the board; it will be easier later to persuade them to be conservative on their claims decisions."
As it turned out, the process fix in L.A. resulted in a tiny fraction of applicants receiving money and a pool of greenbacks left over.
The Times requested interviews with Geragos and Kabateck about the litigation; Yeghiayan died in 2017. Neither chaser agreed to speak with reporters, but each provided written responses.
Shant Karnikian, a police force partner of Kabateck, said in a letter to The Times that the instances of fraud that emerged later in the treatment of coin were a outcome of the actions of others, including the settlement administrator and another attorney.
Asked about the e-mail referencing a need for the board to be "conservative," Karnikian said the attorneys wanted to ensure claims were "not simply unconditionally prophylactic-stamped" for approval.
"Class counsel worried most unsubstantiated (and potentially false) claims being liberally approved thus reducing the overall amount left for legitimate substantiated claims," Karnikian wrote.
::
Some grade-action lawsuits are straightforward. Lawyers win a pot of money for a grouping harmed by a visitor or organization. Consumers get a observe in the postal service that they are eligible for a payout. They sign a form and receive a cheque.
Deciding who got money from the genocide cases was more than complicated. Armenians who fled the massacres often left everything backside, including insurance documents. Families scattered across continents, their names altered by immigration authorities or the alphabet of their new home. Stories were passed down, but with each passing generation, there were fewer people with firsthand information.
In an credible acknowledgment of the unusual circumstances, the AXA settlement set a depression bar for blessing claims. Though the ultimate conclusion belonged to the lath, the terms stated that if an applicant submitted as piddling show every bit a sworn declaration outlining how he was a rightful heir to a listed policyholder, it could be considered sufficient proof for payment.
Just when French board members made a brief visit to 50.A. in March 2008 to get a briefing on the claims process they were ostensibly supervising, they said they were told that much stricter criteria were already in use for preliminary decisions. Applicants had to correctly identify the metropolis of residence their long-dead relatives had listed in insurance records to be considered for approval. If they got the city wrong, the awarding was rejected — no affair the other bear witness presented.
Shnorhokian, the French lath member, said the attorneys told him and his colleagues that this was the aforementioned standard used in the New York Life evaluations.That was not true, according to board members for the New York Life claims. They said in interviews that evaluators used a holistic arroyo based on submitted records and did not disqualify applicants solely for incorrectly identifying the city of residence.
Asked about the city-of-residence requirement, Kabateck'southward police partner, Karnikian, said, "Any such benchmark was not — and could not be — imposed by class counsel."
The new benchmark appears to have had a profound issue: Accountings in court records prove that less than viii% of AXA claims applications were canonical for payment. One issue of the low approval rate was that millions of dollars in the settlement accounts could be used, per the wording of the settlement, for charitable purposes.
Those rejected on the city-of-residence ground included people who had provided what appeared to be overwhelming prove that they were rightful heirs, co-ordinate to archived files reviewed by The Times in contempo months. Some who were denied had sent copies of their ancestors' insurance policies — among the strongest possible proof that they had valid claims. The archived files suggest evaluators dismissed applications without reviewing the evidence, writing: "cities don't match."
Even when evaluators took the time to go through the documents, the metropolis of residence overrode other testify. Sylvia Bergin, a British retiree, submitted a claim for her gramps'due south policy with copies of birth certificates, police records and passports. The evaluator in downtown L.A. institute Bergin's application convincing, writing in her file "it is evident" she was the granddaughter of the policyholder.
"However, the place of residence of the insured … and the place of residence on the claim form (Rodosto, Turkey) do non match," the evaluator wrote. Her claim was rejected.
Told of the evaluation by The Times, Bergin disputed that she had gotten the city of residence wrong, noting that she and her parents had visited her grandparents' one-time home in Rodosto in the 1970s.
"It makes me sick," Bergin said. "They are Armenians supposedly interim on behalf of Armenians, and things are not done correct."
The settlement administrator, Parsegh Kartalian, declined to answer questions, proverb he had retentiveness loss from brain surgery and other medical bug.
Every bit the evaluation procedure drew to a close in 2009, the L.A. office shipped the French board about a quarter of the claims for review. Though the wording of the settlement vested lath members with the power to corroborate and deny claims, they had played almost no part in evaluating applications to that point. As they read through the sampling of files from L.A., the board members concluded that many marked for rejection should be approved.
When they tried to correct what they saw as errors, Geragos intervened and warned the French board members in a letter that they might be sued. He wrote: "It is our recommendation that the Settlement Board immediately reassess the purported blessing of claims."
The lath stood down.
::
Decision letters from the AXA case started going out to Armenians effectually the world in early 2010. The vast majority carried bad news: 12,795 out of xiii,856 applications were rejected.
The uproar was swift.
"Who received my grandfather'south insurance sum instead of me if I had sent all needed documents which proved that I am the heir of the Insured," an indignant applicant wrote to the lawyers in one of many complaint letters submitted to U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder.
Another denied bidder wrote that he had sent 23 records to prove he was a descendant and had been counting on the coin for heart surgery.
"My paternal grandparents were beheaded at my male parent'due south presence," he wrote. "Honestly I'm and so disappointed."
Many complained that they were denied while close relatives received checks. In i instance, twin sisters and their blood brother in Armenia sent nearly identical applications on the same solar day from the same post office, according to another letter. Merely one sister was approved.
"Our sister doesn't want to share her money with united states of america! She thinks that is not her problem only yours!" the human wrote.
Half dozen cousins trying to collect on their grandfather's policy said they had used similar proof, yet only three received checks. A cousin in Republic of cyprus fumed, "Is there whatsoever possible legal explanation … because nosotros are all baffled!"
Armenia'southward Ministry of Justice, which had helped citizens set up their applications, also wrote to the judge in L.A. in June 2010, saying officials were "extremely dissatisfied" and wanted courtroom intervention.
"Otherwise information technology is not articulate what the purpose of this process was," the ministry wrote.
In his law office on Make Boulevard, Yeghiayan, the homo who had dreamed up the litigation, became increasingly distraught.He was deluged with calls, emails and letters. Furious Armenians denounced him and the other lawyers as "worse than Turks," he emailed Kabateck and Geragos. The heroic cause that had been his life'due south mission was falling apart.
Yeghiayan trained his frustration on the other attorneys. He filed an emergency motion asking the guess to guild an independent audit of the settlement, alleging Geragos and Kabeteck had splurged on outset-form travel and treated the descendants' money equally "lilliputian greenbacks."
The accusations seemed to enrage Geragos, who excoriated Yeghiayan in an email: "Your motivation in making these defamatory and knowingly false statements is driven solely by your drastic financial situation."
Geragos and Kabateck told the estimate in a lengthy filing that Yeghiayan did "not accept a scintilla of proof" and, regardless, the settlement didn't allow revisiting the claims decisions. They reassured the judge that to them, this was "more than just a class activeness."
"It is a sacred chore that Brian Kabateck and Mark Geragos are honored to prosecute on behalf of the Armenian people," they wrote.
The judge, Snyder, turned down the asking for an independent audit. She declined to answer questions virtually the litigation, saying through a deputy that the judicial lawmaking of comport prohibited her from commenting.
::
In Feb 2011, the French board received an electronic mail from L.A. that stopped them common cold. Kabateck and Geragos wanted to dissolve the settlement board and destroy the claims files that had come in from effectually the world, office of the materials they described as "whatsoever and all files and non-historic documents."
Those same materials in the New York Life settlement had been deemed so precious — in the lawyers' description, "a wealth of historical data that record the Armenian genocide" — that they were nether lock and key at USC's Shoah Foundation for future scholarly research.
Beyond the cultural value, the board saw the records as central to ensuring that mistakes hadn't been made. Though the claims office was past then closed, the board was still looking into complaints and had asked to review records related to which applicants were paid and which were non.
Troubled, the board refused to sign off on the shredding of documents. Instead, members promised to travel to L.A. to investigate.
Kabateck's response unsettled them further. He emailed that he was too busy to run across and that Geragos had taken over, writing, "My file is closed."
"Rat fleeing a sinking send," Yeghiayan remarked to a French board member in an electronic mail later turned over to authorities.
Kabateck's law partner, Karnikian, offered no caption for the email to the French board seeking to destroy the documents. The subsequent filing to the guess for permission to destroy the documents was "a misunderstanding," likely past junior lawyers who prepared the brief, Karnikian said. He claimed the filing was "withdrawn within hours." A review of the docket shows the filing was never withdrawn and was discussed at hearings and referenced in other courtroom documents for years afterward.
Alarmed by the attempt to close downward the settlement process and dispose of the records, the French board went direct to the judge, asking in a letter that the files be "kept safely" until members could come up to Southern California. At an April 2011 hearing, the lath laid out its complaints in person. Snyder, the judge, agreed the board should take a chance to review the records.
Information technology wasn't long before serious irregularities were discovered.
::
Of the hundreds of Armenians approved for compensation from the AXA fund, a Syrian named Zaven Haleblian stood apart. He was awarded $574,425, more than than whatever other private, according to a settlement database later provided to government, court records and filings with the Land Bar of California.
Still every bit the French board soon learned, Haleblian had never heard of the AXA settlement, permit lonely applied for it.
With the files and depository financial institution records, the French lath and Yeghiayan started working together to unravel where the money went in the AXA settlement. The Glendale lawyer tracked down Haleblian in Aleppo and arranged for him to exist questioned under oath in the U.S. During a deposition, he expressed daze that checks had been issued in his name. He said he had never heard of the supposed ancestors — members of the Funduklian family — listed for him in the settlement database.
Another area Yeghiayan and the French board investigated was a secret banking company account. Kabateck and Geragos had provided the French board and later the gauge with a Pacific Western Bank argument showing that of the original $xi million to pay claims and administrative costs, but $346,050.62 was left over.
Just later on the French board got access to the settlement financial records, Geragos and Kabateck disclosed to the gauge a second account at Comerica Bank containing an boosted $2.v million.
The lawyers said then that they likewise had been in the dark almost its existence and pointed the finger at Kartalian, the settlement administrator. In a declaration they submitted on his behalf, Kartalian said he had moved the money to secure a better interest rate and had notinformed the attorneys.
Further investigation turned up more questionable recipients who were awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars.
V checks totaling more $400,000 were made out in the proper name of Ashot Mkhitarian, an Armenian Christian supposedly living in Baghdad, according to court and financial records. Contacted by Yeghiayan and his associates, the Armenian and Iraqi governments were unable to confirm his beingness, and a person dispatched to the accost listed in the claims database establish a Sunni Muslim neighborhood where no one had heard of Mkhitarian, according to accounts in courtroom records, a hearing transcript and research turned over to authorities. Depository financial institution records showed some of the checks in Mkhitarian's name were converted into cashier'south checks in Southern California.
Additionally, the settlement administrator, Kartalian, had issued more than than $300,000 in checks to his ain relatives, including his wife and mother in law.
When the lath and Yeghiayan tried to look at the underlying records for Kartalian's relatives to verify they were entitled to payments, those files were missing. There were also no files for the Syrian, the Iraqi or dozens of others who had been sent large checks. The absent files represented most $ii million in awards, according to an analysis presented to the court. The files were never located.
Asked under adjuration whether he had an caption for the missing files, Kartalian replied, "I don't," co-ordinate to a deposition transcript. He was not questioned about his relatives' eligibility for payment.
In a recent review of AXA files archived in more than than fifty bankers boxes at the Loyola Law School library, The Times uncovered additional irregularities. Applications that evaluators had described as valid were stamped "DENIED" while other claims they deemed flimsy were stamped "Canonical."
A suburban Atlanta adult female, June Howard, practical for payment nether 17 different policies she claimed were held by relatives of an Armenian grandfather who immigrated to the U.Due south. before the genocide.
Evaluators were dubious, with ane writing of her awarding to collect on the policy of a man named Bedros Bozian: "Many different documents were provided by the claimant, however, none of the documents displayed whatsoever kind of link between the insured and the claimant."
Yet, that claim was approved for payment, as were 26 other claims for Howard and other family members. All told, the family was awarded nigh $100,000.
Howard died in 2019. Family members initially agreed to an interview but stopped responding to emails after receiving a list of questions.
Geragos and Kabateck said they were not to blame for problems in the claims process. It was the French board and "their fund administrator" who were in charge, they told the gauge.
"We had nothing to exercise with that process at all," Kabateck said at a 2011 hearing.
::
What many of these irregularities had in common was the involvement of Berj Boyajian, a Beverly Hills lawyer.
Studying the bank records, the board and Yeghiayan saw Boyajian's signature again and once more on the backs of AXA checks made out to other people. Settlement checks totaling $312,000 had ended upwards in his police force firm's accounts, court filings and canceled checks testify.
Boyajian was no stranger to the Armenian genocide litigation. He had served on the New York Life claims board, had a law practice in the same building every bit the AXA settlement claims office, and was acquainted with several evaluators, including a niece and relatives of close friends.
Merely he had no official role in the AXA case, and how and why he became enmeshed in the claims money would exist a subject of dispute.
Questioned nether oath, the person who would be expected to have immediate information virtually what Boyajian was doing, the settlement administrator Kartalian, described Boyajian as a consultant with no role in claims decisions.
He could not explain how Boyajian had gotten hold of the checks or the master listing of claimants, a confidential database that fifty-fifty Yeghiayan couldn't obtain, according to degradation testimony and an account Yeghiayan gave in courtroom.
Boyajian had endorsed about $90,000 in checks issued to the wife and mother in law of Kartalian, along with a $23,805 bank check made out to the sister of one of his best friends, former state legislator Walter Karabian, co-ordinate to courtroom filings.
In the case of Haleblian, the Syrian resident who had not applied for settlement money, it turned out that Boyajian was a childhood friend and the one-half-million dollars in checks had concluded up in an L.A. bank account Boyajian had opened in Haleblian's proper name without his knowledge, co-ordinate to Haleblian'southward deposition.
Subsequently questions were raised with the court, Boyajian hired a criminal defence chaser. Subpoenaed to prove nether oath, he invoked his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination and refused to respond lawyers' queries.
He later told the State Bar that he believed he had a correct to certain settlement funds because he had reached a side deal with Geragos and Kabateck to assistance coordinate the AXA claims. In exchange, he said, they agreed to let him direct 25% of the charity money to causes he selected. Emails turned over to law enforcement show the lawyers discussing the deal.Kabateck's law partner said he never agreed to information technology.
Boyajian claimed to the Land Bar that he fished some of the checks out of mail returned to the claims part and deposited them in his police force firm account so they wouldn't become "stale" and "uncashable."
In an interview concluding year at his mansion overlooking Trousdale Estates, Boyajian said he had no motive to embezzle from the settlement. Gesturing to his opulent home and swimming pool, he said, "I am not a poor guy and I don't need $100,000 or $200,000 to steal from anybody."
He could not explain the Syrian's checks, only admitted one error, transferring $150,000 in settlement funds to a loftier-terminate downtown jeweler. As Boyajian told it, the jeweler was a friend who needed a span loan to purchase a diamond for a ring that a customer, L.A. lawyer Tom Girardi, wanted to give his wife, Erika. Boyajian said the amount was eventually paid back.
Kabateck's law partner blamed Boyajian for many of the problems in the settlement, including the missing files, which, he said, "Boyajian likely removed … in an attempt to hide his fraud." Boyajian denied that, saying in a contempo interview that Kabateck was seeking to rewrite history and "is lying through his teeth."
Boyajian called his own behavior "stupid." He could not offer a house clarification of the office he was supposed to play in the settlement, remarking at one indicate, "I really don't know what my function was."
What is articulate is that he had a long-standing relationship with a permissive broker.
Avedis "Avo" Markarian had been Boyajian'due south personal banker for decades at a serial of institutions and was working at Pacific Western in downtown L.A. at the time of the AXA settlement.
Interviewed outside his Pasadena home, the banker said that Boyajian brought him stacks of checks for processing, and that because of their long human relationship, he did not review them closely before sending them to a check processing facility in Santa Fe Springs.
Markarian left the bank before Pacific Western'southward role in the AXA irregularities came into focus. He said he was terminated for reasons unconnected to the case, but acknowledged information technology changed how he did business organisation. "I am more cautious," he said.
::
Geragos and Kabateck had initially rejected the idea of auditing the claims. Merely after the French board went to the judge, the attorneys said they also wanted to get to the bottom of the problems.
Geragos told the approximate the following year that Boyajian's attorney had reached out and said his customer was prepared to repay some of the money. Well-nigh $700,000 was eventually returned. Boyajian said he had passed the rest of the money on to the rightful claimants.
In his Glendale office, Yeghiayan took a dim view of Boyajian's repayments.
"A crime has been committed. Now are we hoping to brand a bargain that would cover up the theft?" Yeghiayan steamed to his attorney in an electronic mail.
By that point, the human who started the entire legal endeavor had himself come under scrutiny. Geragos and Kabateck had sued Yeghiayan and his wife, too a lawyer.
They accused the couple of "a shameful scheme to personally loot" charity money from the genocide settlements. Nigh $300,000 distributed to their genocide education nonprofit had been redirected to their daughter, Yeghiayan himself or their law house. That amount included$11,000 that went toward his children's law schoolhouse tuition.
Yeghiayan and his wife saw the suit as retaliation for his whistleblowing, as she afterwards testified. The couple defended the payouts, maxim that the charity did of import piece of work and that the payments, which the nonprofit's board approved, were advisable because their family had labored for free for years before the AXA settlement provided retroactive compensation.
Judicial officers at the Land Bar later offered some backing for that claim, finding testify the charity had "many legitimate activities." A panel of State Bar judges ruled it was "undisputed" that Yeghiayan had lent the nonprofit coin and that his married woman and children "did considerable work … and incurred expenses."
Yeghiayan returned $31,000 and settled the lawsuit in 2013. He felt that the accusations tainted his reputation in the Armenian community. Yeghiayan's widow, Rita Mahdessian, did non return messages seeking comment.
The terms of the settlement limited what Yeghiayan could say and practise about problems in the AXA settlement. An expansive nondisparagement clause barred public statements about Geragos, Kabateck and their employees.
Simply Yeghiayan was undeterred. With a handful of young assistants in his Glendale office, he assembled a dossier of emails, bank records and court filings and prepared a 20-folio memo of his allegations confronting Geragos, Kabateck, Boyajian and others that he titled "AXA Fraud — A Chronological Narrative," according to a copy of the materials turned over to law enforcement and reviewed by The Times.
Emails suggest Yeghiayan made a series of approaches to the U.South. attorney's role and the FBI, first in 2012. Spokespeople at both agencies declined to comment, citing a policy of non confirming or denying investigations.
Representatives for both Kabateck and Geragos noted that there accept been no criminal charges against them or findings of wrongdoing on their part.
Ben Meiselas, a partner at Geragos & Geragos law firm, called the newspaper's questions about the instance "all defamatory, wrong, bizarre."
"These recycled conspiracy theories have been rejected on multiple occasions by both inside and outside counsel for the State Bar, both local and country authorities and the presiding Federal Estimate," Meiselas wrote in an email.
Information technology's not articulate whether federal authorities even considered Yeghiayan's allegations.
Yeghiayan told his lawyer in a 2013 email that the FBI had gotten back to him with disappointing news. The agent said that "no investigation will exist forthcoming" unless the judge herself formally referred the affair to the U.S. Justice Department.
::
Judge Snyder had overseen the genocide litigation since 2000, and she was conspicuously exasperated when the French lath raised concerns to her in 2011, maxim the issues "should take been brought to my attention much earlier."
"Permit me be edgeless," she said later on the board suggested that up to $5 million might be missing and that it was up to the guess to sort information technology out. "I have 350 other cases, and I am not going to undertake a general audit of what has occurred."
That was one of at to the lowest degree five times that Yeghiayan, the French settlement board or heirs of policyholders asked Snyder to lodge a caput-to-toe review of the settlement.
She resisted, saying some of those inspect requests deviated from proper legal process and citing concerns that the cost of a fulsome investigation would swallow upward what remained of the money intended for Armenian heirs or charities. She was encouraged in this view past Kabateck and Geragos.
"They would like to go back and peel back this onion. We don't know how far to keep peeling it back," Kabateck told her at a 2011 hearing, where he argued against further investigation and urged the judge to "get this process resolved so that we tin then, you know, shut this claim procedure downwards."
Snyder greenlighted some investigative efforts, ordering banks to plough over records and signing off on depositions of the settlement administrator and others. At one betoken, she permitted an accounting firm to analyze about 200 approved claims. The review was limited — it did not look at whether individuals should have been approved in the get-go place — but information technology uncovered significant problems. Checks totaling more than $ane.4 million had been issued but never cashed, while checks for $500,000 due claimants had never been issued, co-ordinate to the auditor's written report filed with the court.
Snyder considered involving law enforcement, simply explained at one hearing, "I don't take lightly the affair of making referrals to prosecutors."
She was as well cautious virtually reporting Boyajian to the State Bar, the public agency responsible for policing the legal profession, despite evidence that he had misappropriated hundreds of thousands of dollars, co-ordinate to transcripts and court filings.
Agency officials were ready to investigate if Snyder made a formal referral, according to a joint filing in 2013 by Kabateck, Geragos and Yeghiayan. They said that as a grouping they supported her doing so. Only Snyder stated at a hearing that she didn't "know plenty of the facts to tell whatsoever of you at this phase that I'thousand prepared to exercise annihilation."
When the issue came up a few months afterward, Snyder ordered the attorneys to give her written assessments of Boyajian'due south misconduct with an middle toward referring him to the Country Bar, according to court documents and transcripts. The estimate sealed the lawyers' recommendations, every bit she had with dozens of other sensitive documents in the case.
The Times successfully petitioned Snyder last twelvemonth for access to the records. Geragos was the lonely attorney whoopposed making the documents public.
The newly unsealed documents show that Geragos argued confronting referring Boyajian to the State Bar, writing that "assuasive an investigation at this point" might hinder efforts to recoup money from him. The judge appeared persuaded, ruling that "a referral should non be fabricated at this time."
As the proceedings dragged on, the deadline to file charges confronting Boyajian related to the AXA money drew closer. By the fourth dimension the L.A. Canton district attorney'due south part looked into the allegations in 2016, the statute of limitations for fraud and other serious counts had passed, according to a State Bar filing by Boyajian's attorney. Boyajian pleaded no contest to a felony and a misdemeanor charge in connection with making false claims to the Land Bar and ultimately served no jail fourth dimension.
"We thought [the misappropriation allegations] should have been referred to the U.S. chaser to investigate," recalled Lee Boyd, a former Pepperdine Law Schoolhouse professor who was the chaser for the French board. "Once the approximate said no, it is over. And I had to accept that."
In bound 2014, as Kabateck and Geragos were pushing to close out the settlement process, they asked the French lath to sign a release that would forbid the board from e'er suing the lawyers. The lath members refused, to the annoyance of Geragos, a transcript shows.
"The settlement lath, as they've connected to do throughout this, has caused even more issues, and it's most the tail wagging the dog at this point," Geragos complained to the judge. As a result of their refusal, he suggested, the judge should slash a planned $30,000 reimbursement for their travel, legal and authoritative costs.
Snyder gave them $three,000, noting that she had been "trying to avert appeals and wrap things up."
At the same time, the judge awarded the lawyers an boosted $1 1000000 in legal fees and costs for what she described every bit extra work to ensure "a proper accounting and recoupment of misdirected settlement funds." Geragos' firm lonely received $450,000.
Snyder officially closed the case in 2016. 2 years later, Kabateck presented her an award on behalf of the Armenian Bar Assn.
"Every judge should take lessons from the Honorable Christina Snyder. She is patient with everyone but nonetheless has control of her courtroom, and she knows the law inside and out," Kabateck said at the 2018 feast.
After applause, Snyder chosen her presiding over the genocide litigation "a remarkable feel."
::
No community had been more than excited about the AXA settlement than the approximately 600,000 ethnic Armenians who lived in France. In a victory tour to Paris later on signing the understanding, Geragos, Yeghiayan and Kabateck told French Armenian charities that they would receive at least $3 1000000 nether the settlement, co-ordinate to interviews and published accounts.
"I really thought they were heroes," said Ara Toranian, a journalist and leader of a consortium of Franco Armenian civic groups.
The L.A. attorneys told nonprofits to draw up proposals for how they might spend the windfall and eventually received more 100 pounds of paper applications, recalled Shnorhokian, the French lath member.
The promises the L.A. lawyers made were consistent with the terms of the settlement understanding. It specified that the charity portion of the settlement — an initial $3 meg plus any was left over from compensating the descendants — would be sent to a foundation set up in France to "advance the interests of the Armenian community." AXA would write the bylaws for this new charity and the Fifty.A. lawyers would nominate an oversight board to distribute the money.
But the French foundationwas never prepare. The 50.A. lawyers instead handpicked charities to receive the funds intended for the foundation, according to court records and emails among the lawyers turned over to government.
In that location was no subpoena of the settlement understanding. At one point, the three attorneys acknowledged in a court filing that they were deviating from the settlement terms, explaining that there was "difficulty" and "confusion" nearly setting upward a French nonprofit, which made it "too costly" to pursue.
But they speedily withdrew the filing and did not publicly revisit the matter.
Kabateck's law partner, Karnikian, contended that the withdrawn motion "explicitly notified" the judge of the lawyers' decision to depart from the settlement agreement, and the judge "had no outcome with this publicly filed plan" since she did non object. He added, "Neither the court, AXA, the general public, whatsoever organization, nor anyone else e'er challenged this solution."
More than $1 million did brand it to France-based charities, including hundreds of thousands of dollars to prominent nonprofits such as the Paris affiliate of the Armenian Full general Benevolent Matrimony, or AGBU, as well as smaller grants to cultural groups and schools.
Organizations with no connection to the Franco Armenian community also received payouts.
Kabateck directed $25,000 to Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County, a nonprofit on whose board he sat, according to a 2010 accounting ledger later on turned over to authorities. This gift was non included in the lists of charity donations the lawyers submitted to the estimate.
Kabateck's partner, Karnikian, confirmed that he fabricated the donation without informing the judge, and said he was not required to file a report nether the terms of the settlement. Those terms envisioned all of the money existence sent to the French foundation for distribution. Karnikian said those served by Neighborhood Legal Services included "the low-income Armenian customs."
Another major recipient of AXA funds was Loyola Law Schoolhouse, a downtown Fifty.A. institution with few ties to France just close ties to the attorneys involved. Geragos and Kabateck were alumni who appeared frequently at campus events and whose firms hired students as clerks and graduates equally associates. Kabateck has served for years as the chair of the police school'south board of directors and is a trustee of its parent university, Loyola Marymount. Children of Geragos and Yeghiayan also earned police force degrees at that place.
The police force school said it received near $1.4 1000000 from the New York Life and AXA settlements, more than any other single establishment. Yet in lists submitted to the judge, the attorneys disclosed $400,000 in donations to Loyola.
The contributions flowed to the schoolhouse in fits and starts over a nine-year menstruum, arriving in amounts as small every bit $10,634.68 and every bit big as $350,000.
In one case, a $350,000 donation identified in court papers as going to well-known Armenian charity AGBU wound up at Loyola. Kabateck'south police partner said AGBU "independently decided" to donate the coin to Loyola "upon receipt of the funds."
Emails later turned over to constabulary enforcement show that the attorneys had worked out in accelerate that the money they told the judge was going to AGBU would rapidly be forwarded to the school. AGBU President Berge Setrakian told The Times the funds were sent to Loyola with the "guidance" of the lawyers. The clemency "did non know how this disbursement was reported to the court," its chief financial officeholder, Mark Gitlen, told the newspaper, adding, "we were non concerned since we believed this contribution would service a worthy crusade."
The cause at Loyola became known as the Center for the Study of Constabulary and Genocide, only its manager said it started with smaller ambitions. Stanley Goldman, a criminal constabulary professor who had taught both Geragos and Kabateck, said he had been trying for years to raise a modest sum for a course on the Holocaust, genocide and the constabulary.
When he floated the thought to Kabateck effectually 2002, the lawyer responded that it was possible he could adjust a charity disbursement of "equally much equally $50,000 left over" from the anticipated genocide settlements. Goldman said he was surprised when contributions many times that amount kept arriving.
More than a decade later, Goldman is still cartoon downwards that money to operate the center. Information technology supports recent graduates who work in human being rights and operates a legal dispensary where students assistance draft amicus briefs in international police force cases.
Kabateck's police force partner, Karnikian, asserted that donations to Loyola and other nonprofits without a connexion to France were permitted for a certain "tranche" of AXA money. The Times could not find such a provision in the agreement and Karnikian did not provide support for the claim.
What happened to other charity funds remains unclear. The Times could not account for more than $750,000 that the lawyers told the gauge had gone to specific religious organizations.
That amount includes $100,000 the lawyers told the guess they were splitting between the Armenian Catholic and Armenian Protestant churches. Officials from both told The Times they had no record of such a donation.
Kabateck's police force partner confirmed that "the money never left the accounts" and said it "was distributed to other charities at a later appointment."
There was also a $450,000 donation to an overseas entity of the Armenian Apostolic Church that Geragos listed in a 2010 court filing.
Officials at the denomination's Paris office and its headquarters in Armenia confirmed they had received other AXA money disclosed in court records: checks totaling $300,000 that Kabateck signed in 2008 and a $50,000 bank check signed by Geragos in 2010.
But the French church and Armenian headquarters found no record of the $450,000 donation, according to letters given to The Times and separate correspondence previously provided to police force enforcement.
Geragos maintained in an email to The Times that he wrote checks on a settlement account and gave them to the church'due south local diocese in Burbank, which then transferred the coin to Armenia, writing that "all of the money earmarked was accounted for over 10 years ago." He offered every bit evidence two redacted statements that showed transfers of $450,000 from adiocese account at Pacific Western Bank with the memo line "Catholicos of All Armenians," the English term for the Armenian-based leader of the church.
The statements did non identify the recipient of the transfer nor AXA as the source of the funds, and Geragos did not answer to a question almost why the church in Armenia said it never received the money.
The Burbank diocese's executive director declined to provide data about settlement money information technology received or handled, saying only, "All funds were directed appropriately."
Geragos had a long relationship with the Burbank-based diocese, and served ii decades as its general counsel. About this time, the feast hall at a diocesan church building in Pasadena was renamed for Geragos' parents, an honor a local paper reported was the result of a contribution he had fabricated.
Yeghiayan was concerned that Geragos used settlement proceeds to secure the hall name and outlined those worries to the French lath in an e-mail later on turned over to authorities, writing, "Now he wants to buy his parents with Axa clemency money?"
Markarian, the onetime Pacific Western banker who was account officer for both the settlement and the Burbank diocese, said in an interview that information technology did not make sense for settlement checks to be routed through the diocese. The coin, he said, could have been wired in a single transfer direct from the AXA account to the church overseas.
::
Last year, after decades of pressure, the U.S. formally recognized the Armenian genocide. In a statement on Apr 24, the anniversary of the 1915 arrests of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders, President Biden praised the "forcefulness and resilience" of the survivors and their descendants.
"They have never forgotten the tragic history that brought so many of their ancestors to our shores," he said.
On his weekly podcast a few days later, Geragos said Biden's move was more than than a political symbol. He said it potentially opened the door for him to file new lawsuits against the Turkish authorities or banks.
"Information technology'southward an interesting place that we are going to be," he said.
Questions nigh the insurance settlement money still linger. The French lath and a handful of descendants took their frustrations to the Country Bar. The agency suspended Boyajian from the do of constabulary in 2018 and he later on resigned his license.
The State Bar filed disciplinary charges confronting Yeghiayan and made an unsuccessful endeavour to disbar his wife. It took no activeness against Kabateck and Geragos, with a bar supervisor telling one alleged victim that "suspicion is not a basis for investigation."
Shnorhokian, of the French board, has continued sending the State Bar and police force enforcement agencies what he sees every bit evidence Geragos and Kabateck mishandled settlement funds.
"I simply want justice," Shnorhokian said. "I will fight to the terminate."
Yeghiayan did not get a chance to defend himself confronting the Country Bar charges. The architect of the genocide cases died Sept. 29, 2017, at historic period 81.
In an interview posted on YouTube the yr he died, Yeghiayan tried to rally the Armenian community to investigate the settlement.
"It's a typical Armenian concept that we shouldn't tell other people about our dirty laundry," he said. "The more than quicker we show our muddy laundry, the adjacent generation, other people will non dare to try and steal money from Armenian organizations."
Times special contributor Astrig Agopian in Paris and Yerevan contributed to this written report.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Source: https://www.aol.com/news/blood-money-betrayal-corruption-spoiled-120007836.html
إرسال تعليق for "Mark Geragos Says Will Play Again"